3x a Monster
by Finnegal
Summary: Three times Dexter thinks about his past, including his brother, Brian Moser, and his cop-foster-father, Harry Morgan.
1. Chapter 1

I didn't have best friends. Or _a_best friend. I had wailing, weary animals that I spent my weekends with, wrangled from the neighbourhood after watching them in their wary ways. Cats, commonly, and dogs, dangerous due to their yapping yodels. The smaller dogs were much more of a challenge; cats could be baited and trapped and kept quiet. But the small dogs would howl and bark and cause me to dispose of them much quicker than I would have liked. The larger dogs were less inconspicuous, but one dog treat and they'd wag their tails and follow you for more. But you can't feed a dead dog.

This was what Dark Demonic Dexter spent his time doing, when all the other kids thought he was swatting for the next big exam. I didn't mind being Dorky Dex if it meant no one was suspicious of me when family pets went missing. But Harry, my ever-vigilant cop foster-father, knew the traits of a sickly son and it wasn't long before he went on hunts of his own. Needless to say, he soon found my boneyard. What can I say? I was young; I didn't have nice, neat slides.

Perhaps any other father would have showed such terrible trinkets to his wife and wondered worriedly what to do with the offending offspring. But Harry made sure I saw them again, and I made sure that he knew I could identify each animal bone by bone. His attempted inquisition, fuelled by his judgementally judicial outlooks on justice and a need to look after his family, faltered in the face of my Dark Passenger's ambitions. He and I aren't just Deadly Destroyers, but Clean Collectors, even more so working for Miami Metro.

It was this, I think, that made Harry reconsider any plans he might have laid down in his mind. Once he realised that we wanted nothing more than to be a neat monster, he saw that something could be done. He wouldn't have to send me to therapy to try and turn around any tumultuous thoughts of terror that lurked in my mind; he could teach me himself. A clean monster is a happy monster, at least in my case-file, and in his well-intentioned ways, Harry raised me to make the most of Miami's monsters, missing from jail.

This was how Harry's hunting expeditions with me started. He taught me to cut up big game so that when the time came, Diligent Dexter would be ready to carve up a criminal, closer in size to a boar than a beagle.

I didn't have a best friend. I had worthy, writhing adversaries that I spent my weekends tracking and hunting, and a foster-father who kept me away from the wary wonderings of the neighbourhood watch, newly established due to the recent spate of pet-murders…


	2. Chapter 2

My two sets of parents should have been parallel lines. Dainty Doris and Hard-headed Harry Morgan, under any other circumstances, would never have become a part of Darling Dexter's life if it weren't for my murdered mother, Lamentable Laura Moser. But that's not fair, either, and though I don't care to use such disgraceful language as 'fair', my cop father should take some of the blame for my mother's gory demise. As well as for my Dark Passenger's awakening. In any way that I look at it, without Harry there'd be no Dexter. There'd be no urge to kill, no need to be the Dark Avenger. Without Harry there'd be no Code. Without Harry my mother wouldn't be dead.

Instead of being parallel they were perpendicular. Doris didn't know my mother; I presume the same for Laura not knowing Doris. It's like knowing you share the planet with close to ten billion other people, but you don't have to be aware of them all. But Harry was the line that made two 90 degree angles, both at once dividing his wife and his… lover, and giving them an equal connection.

Did he love Doris? I don't know. I ask myself that in the same way I ask myself if I love Rita. Romanced Rita, my girlfriend not so long ago divorced from an abusive relationship. Certainly I'm faithful to her in ways that Harry wasn't to his wife. But, so I've heard, that doesn't always determine love. Perhaps Harry the Honorable cop had more in common with me, his killer son, than he thought. …but would he have stayed with Doris if he didn't love her?

The question is nothing more than a mild curiosity to me. All it would have meant for me was that there'd be more of Harry around the house and less of Doris. …I suppose there was when she died, at least. Things weren't all that different than.

But if Harry hadn't met my mother – that would have been an entire world of changes. For the Moser family, at least. No Harry, no Code. No Dark Passenger for Dexter turned Demonic after the untimely massacre of his mother.

…but with all I've done over the years, taking out the trash – though unfortunately there's not a more environment-friendly way – I'm certain that the world's a better place. Miami, at least.

Add Dexter to the perpendicular set of lines and you can turn it into a square. …all neat corners, something that can be tidied away without making a mess.

Like the Ice Truck Killer's victims.


	3. Chapter 3

Brian Moser. What is it I'm supposed to feel for him? I've asked myself that since the day the Ice Truck Killer's death was ruled as a suicide. They'll never know it was a murder. They'll never know he had a brother.

Brian Moser, the first child to my mother, Laura Moser, had spent his childhood in a Tampa Bay mental institute while I, Deeply Disguised Dexter, was learning how to blend in with the rest of normal society. I was at least given a chance. Harry Morgan, my adopted father, knew that I couldn't be repaired, but he saw that parts of me could be, if not replaced, hidden. Father/son activities usually involve fishing, or tinkering under the hood of a car, but I was Harry's own pet project. He channelled my urges into animals for as long as he could, while Brian taught himself how to hold a mask up to his face. But he didn't have a Code.

Harry taught me that not having a Code would mean that I'd be caught and, for the most part, he was right. I don't think he ever thought that Deborah would uncover my dark secret, but she hasn't turned me in yet. It makes me glad that I don't have to ask myself the question of 'would I kill her to keep my cover?'

Biney didn't have a Code and no one had ever gotten close enough to stop him. Except for me. But it wasn't due to his lack of code – or my having one – that brought him to his end. It was in feeling what I couldn't. What I _can't_.

"_You can be yourself with me, Little Brother_."

I had told him that I was 'setting him free' to protect Deborah, my 'fake sister'. But I knew that I was protecting the Code; protecting Harry. Brian's continued existence would have been pissing on Harry's grave. Proverbially.

Brian was proof that you didn't need a learned set of ways to blend in; people see what they want to see. How many other serial killers were there that would never lay on my table? How many unused slides were there compared to my small box full of them? Brian was proof that the only thing Harry taught me was to kill other killers instead of whoever I chose. Harry was God with the Code as his commandments, and Brian was… free-will. The snake in Eden.

I had to set him free.


End file.
